Friday, October 28, 2016

Successful day

Well, I'm finally at home, but just for a few days.

       It's been great, as it often is. But too hurried. Other than being abandoned at about 2200 on my couch last night to watch "Gold Rush" and drink bourbon until appropriate levels of drunk happened, I hadn't had any real downtime.

 I now live in South Florida. I don't shovel snow. I do, however, pressure wash, and that took up all of yesterday. Serious, this is a thing. Mildew darkens the concrete of my driveway and my patio, too, out back by my pond, so twice a year I wash the concrete on my property with a high-pressure water gun. I have a 1,800psi gun, which does the job. It's also great for clearning out cobwebs at the top of my screenhouse and washing windows on my second floor while standing in the yard.

 If my driveway isn't appropriately spotless, it's a $100 a day fine. And I've spent plenty of time with a 5,000 PSI water blaster to strip paint and blast rust off of good steel, so I haven't cut off any of my toes or anything. I did take the tip of an old sneaker off last time, though. Stumbled with my head down.

 Along with that, I had to reset some of the threaded lag bolts that are driven into my foundation to accept the bottom of hurricane shutters. They hadn't been used in years, so some of them got snapped when they shuttered the house here in Heaven's Waiting Room a few weeks ago in anticipation of Hurricane Matthew. 

     So, it's been a domestic couple of days, and I did other, equally or even more boring routine stuff, too. Setting myself up for actually relaxing next time I come home, 4 1/2 weeks from now. I got 6 days off this cycle, and tons of shit to do.
 I'm currently marinating stuff for tomorrow, as I type. I'm multitasking.

 So there hasn't been much time for me to do anything that I actually like or really even WANT to do, but so it goes. There are good moments. I'm having a glass of Maker's Mark right now, and tonight I'll split a bottle of champagne w/ Inappropriately Hot Foreign wife and enjoy a cigar. I got a line on some Cohibas. This year's crop of largemouth bass seems to have had a few survivors, so the fish are jumping in the pond, and the winter trade winds are far enough north just now that my little wind chime is making nice noises above the fountain.

   I voted today, also, so I'm feeling Civic as hell.

    I had to wait 45 minutes to Make America Great Again. Seriously, early voting used to be for sailors and military members. Judging by the 300lb Haitian woman behind me who was speaking on the phone THE WHOLE FUCKING TIME, I might have been been pissing on a forest fire today in casting my vote.
 Don't get me wrong. It's good she was exercising the franchise even if she was obviously going to vote for the other person. She was a citizen, and, while on parole (she told whoever she was chewing cud with on the other end of the phone that her parole officer was "trippin'" and out to get her 'for the money."
 Lord, send some of those sweet, sweet $32,000 a year Parole Board bux this way, amirite?
    Well, I learned the girl behind me's story over the next truly awful 45 minutes. She was not using her indoor voice, and so I reread the same page of Nick Cole's 'Control-Alt-Revolt' like 8 times and kept losing track. Anyhow, she is 28, has four children from three men, and while she's not illiterate, the father of her youngest child is, as she has to fill out his Social Security Disability application for him, and she's worried that she'll 'fuck it all up and not get him his money' in her words.

 Seriously. I try not to be a dick. I met a no-class parasitical walking stereotype. And I couldn't get away.

 Well, I voted, anyhow, and that was good.
                  

 Anyhow, time for a refill.

 So, tomorrow's a wash, at least during daylight- got social shit to do, but I got reservations to a French restaurant tomorrow night, so the feed should be decent. Sunday, God willing, I'll be able to laminate a couple of pieces of curved wood I fabbed up last time to make... well, that's a separate post on it's own.

3 comments:

Will said...

You live in an HOA controlled area? As if there isn't enough layers of government already! Those are run by power-mad, greedy bastards, for the most part.

I warned a buddy some years ago not to shop developments that were going to have an HOA. He didn't listen. He's now paying the price for ignoring me. What I couldn't tell him then (or now) is that HOA's are set up specifically to control people like him.

Paul, Dammit! said...

Will, I do- I don't always like it, but it works well for my family. I had to sell my beloved Ram truck when I moved here. No pickups allowed! I wanted to be a redneck for my first 35 years. When I bought my slightly lifted (I had to be able to get my elderly mom on board using the sideboards) Ram w/ beefed-up tires, it was a life-long dream fulfilled, too.
The HOA's suck. I live in a good one, in that they're brutal, but helpful. Other than pressure-washing the house and concrete, they do the rest of it. It's one of the highest-HOA-fee places in S. FL, so they do shit like replacing the underwater grass so when dry season comes I don't have a brown ring on my pond.
..and that's the problem with the place. I have practiced at my local range with the retired cop who handles security m-f days at my place. They have armed guards, and the night kids are just itching to get back into the action this far from A-stan. I'm cool with that. It's the little stuff. They don't have a good patrol plan for the night kids. When I'm out at night, on my bicycle or gigging frogs (don't judge), they have to log me in, but I can goof on them for being 3 minutes late, and they have to endeavor to be into a routine.
I pay 2 1/2 shitloads to have armed guards. When I'm working at and work, I want my wife and kid to to be able to fall asleep with the keys in the ignition of the car and the main doors to my house open, like my mom's house is, even today.
I don't have that. Not yet. The HOA, the things they won't let me do? I can live with them. I mean, they still suck, but the services vs. the restrictions, I can live with.

Will said...

Paul, don't even think that a gated, armed security covered housing community is 100% safe. It's safer than typical, but not "safe". Actually, the attitude of the occupants, and the guards, eventually tends to encourage an increasing level of "unsafeness". Slackness on most everyone's part, combined with the outsider's perception of goodies just waiting to be plucked from inside that area will bring unpleasant surprises some day.
Those gung ho guards will leave, to be replaced by underpaid non-professionals, who will be undertrained, unthinking, out-of-shape, timecard punching, ESL-at-best, drunks and/or druggies. Just give it a few years. Eventually, the focus of the HOA will switch from being safe, to looking safe.
Consider canvassing the neighbors to find out which ones are shooters, and getting them together to get professional training (FrontSight, Mas Ayoob, etc). Then get the group to work on the ones who aren't shooters, including the wives.